:Nintendo Widow

It’s 7am and I’m chatting with my global project team. As part of my Managing Across Cultures class, I have to complete a project with students from three other countries. I’m chatting with a student originally from Brazil who is studying in Finland, a student from Hong Kong in Hong Kong, and an east Canadian student in California. We have to create a PowerPoint presentation by the end of next week and present it to each of our classes.

Despite what I had originally thought, the language barrier is not the biggest challenge. Instead, it’s the time difference. We cannot communicate over email alone. Instead, we must use live chat to agree on our plan before moving forward. Despite having three time zones to deal with, our team is much more flexible than other teams. I got lucky that one other teammate is in my time zone. Otherwise, we’d be juggling four time zones!

The project is interesting. However I wish our deadlines were pushed back by two weeks. I have a full-day interview on Friday and then I’m offline for my Women in Business retreat this weekend. I have Monday off, but I’ll be up early again to chat with my team that morning. Still, it’s easier to chat in my pajamas than catch the early bus to school for a conventional meeting.

I’m home sick today so I’ll be working from home. I have two phone meetings this afternoon. I’m missing one class but my classmate Yoshi has my back. I would normally never miss school, but I think my professor would rather have me stay at home than infect the rest of my classmates with my sore throat. Plus, I want to feel better before my big weekend! Sigh. The timing of this illness sucks.

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Unlike most schools, our fall quarter lasts from late September to mid-December. This means that most people got a break after Labor Day. Even though I don’t officially start my quarter until Wednesday, I’m already playing catch-up in terms of school work (early, condensed direct marketing class), regular work (short-term paid research project) and club stuff (Women in Business and BizComm). Therefore, I spent five hours this afternoon at a local coffee shop hammering away at a PowerPoint presentation, sending and responding to emails regarding the research project, and making sure that I’ve covered all of the bases for the four club events I’ve helped plan between now and December. It’s all coming together but I really needed that 5 hour time to just focus and knock some stuff out. I’m still helping with new MBA orientation on Monday and Tuesday. This shouldn’t be too hard. The toughest part is remembering where I have to be and what time to be there.

Tomorrow I’m meeting with my Direct Marketing team. We have a presentation due on Monday and another short one due on Friday. It’s going to be a wild week but most of it should be interesting….and I mean interesting in a good way.

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Woke up on time
Got ready for work
Felt sick, like REALLY sick
emailed my boss about how I would be in late but I WOULD be in today
went back to bed for 1.5 hours
got up and got to to work late
worked for 7 hours
met Danny at my office at 6:30
went to a BASEBALL game (trust me, this is weird)
enjoyed said baseball game until the 5th inning when hunger overtook both of us
went home, cooked an easy dinner, opened a bottle of wine and watched Arrested Development DVDs until the bottle of wine was almost gone
got ready for bed and wondered why I had felt sick that morning

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After being in grad school for 9 months I find it strange that it was so easy for me to slip back into my 8-5 work schedule. Granted, I have MBA related events almost every weeknight but they are optional and usually pretty fun. I’m home by 8:30 most nights and I end up falling asleep on the couch around 1. Yes, it is simple, boring, and quite refreshing. I guess this kind of normalcy is why I’ve scheduled out every weekend until school starts in September. I can’t handle the normal!

Tomorrow I have a fundraiser/festival planning meeting followed by pub club.

Oh, and the internship is going well: three more weeks of work followed by three weeks of vacation in British Columbia and Texas.

P.S. I also forgot how sitting in one spot all day makes my neck ache. I need to start doing yoga again or something.

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I turned in my last final yesterday. I’m now officially done with my first year of b-school. It feels…the same as it did before except now I’m up late messing around on the internet instead of scraping together my homework for the next day.

So what do I do now that I’m out of school for the summer? Why hang out with my fellow MBAs of course! I think I’ve gone no more than two days without seeing a classmate. Last night, I had a Women in Business happy hour downtown. Tonight, I met two of my classmates for sushi in Greenlake and then I wandered over to Pub Club in Fremont. Tomorrow, I have no less than three classmate-orchestrated events from which to choose.

I haven’t just been doing stuff with my classmates. Danny’s enjoying having me around for a change. He and I have gone walking many times and we’ve had more time to just hang out and watch stupid TV shows together. Between the both of us, we’ve washed all of our clothes and the house is in pretty good shape in terms of cleanliness. As usual, the cats are worthless except for the moments that they need a warm body to curl up next to and I need a footwarmer.

In other good news, my internship goes from 6/18-8/17. On 8/18, my brother arrives for a week-long visit. My summer will be busy but it should be fun.

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Last night, I attended the second-to last MBA Pub Club of the year. In two weeks, the class of 2007 will graduate. Some will stay in Seattle, but many of them will move on to lucrative jobs nationally and worldwide. I’m happy for them but damn I’ll really miss them! I couldn’t have made it through my first year without the reassuring words that no, I will not fail, yes, I’ll will make it past fall quarter and pay attention, it goes by too quickly.

I know that in a year I’ll most likely be more than ready to move on, but it really is going by so quickly.

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This weekend was the UW MBA annual case competition. First year student teams have three days to analyze a business problem and prepare a 20 minute presentation regarding solutions to the case. My team did well but we did not make it to the final round. I’m sad but I’m also okay with it. We worked hard but we were pretty burned out after finals last week, not to mention coming to school on Saturday. The top three teams get prize money and the winning team gets a trip to Dallas to meet with the company’s executives. I would have enjoyed the trip to Dallas, but I plan to be there in August anyway to visit my family.

Now I’m at home in my pajamas catching up on email and reading. Life is good.

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I’ve left this post blank for a couple of days because I knew I wanted to talk about it, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to say. I’m still not 100% sure what I want to say but I might as well take a crack at it.

On Wednesday, I had a good meeting with my friend and current MBAA president, Jonathan. He and I were meeting to discuss some of the issues facing the MBAA in the coming year as well as how to begin and manage a student blogging group. I have some very definite ideas about it as does he. Our administration does too. The only thing is none of us want to have an exact copy of an existing format, so we need to decide how to blend the different formats together. I’m more in favor of a student-led and managed group. From what I understand, the admissions office wants to be involved as well and might have the student blogs posted directly on one of their main pages. My main concern is the difference between blog posts displayed on a student site vs. the admissions page. I think we will have a bit of freedom once we finally decide on a format, but there are obviously still plenty of details to iron out.

The other big issue we discussed was school identity. Being writers, Jonathan and I try not to get hung up on semantics but we do! One example is the word “competitive.” To say our program is not competitive sends two very different messages. Compared to other programs, our curriculum is very competitive. However, we stay away from the word competitive because our program is very collaborative in nature. I don’t see why these two concepts must be mutually exclusive. We can have a competitive program filled with very collaborative students. To me, this is a clear distinction. However, if someone tells me that the program is not competitive, I assume that that means that the program is not challenging or is not on par with similar MBA programs. This is completely misleading.

Here’s my question: When you hear that a program is competitive, what does that mean to you? How would you rephrase it to mean both competitive and collaborative?

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Everyday a 2nd year asks me, “so, how is this quarter going?” I think they expect me to say “easier” or “much better.” In a lot of ways it is better. I think they can tell by the frequent smiles and empty MBA lounge that my fellow first-year’s are relaxing a little more and spending more time off-campus. Unlike many of them, I’m still very busy. I’m not complaining. It is self-inflicted busy-ness. I’m involved in a lot of clubs and extracurricular activities. I’m happiest when I’m busy, but not overwhelmed. I’m really active but I’m doing well.

This quarter is challenging for me academically. I’m not a quant jock so the spreadsheet modeling and theoretical operations activities are tough for me. I enjoy them because solving them is like solving a puzzle. I just wish I weren’t so lost in some of my team discussions. One of my teammates feels as lost as I do, so we’re pairing up to review the basics this Friday. I know that this quarter is cake for some of my classmates, but I’m still up late reviewing formulas and sample problems. I’m not the best student sometimes, but I seriously need to get my butt in gear if I want to get decent grades on my midterms.

On another note, C4C (MBA challenge for charity) weekend is coming up. I considered going but I just can’t bring myself to pay to “visit” where I used to live. I looked at the map and the hotel where everyone is staying is a 20 minute walk from my old apartment. I realize that the experience of going there with my classmates is different than when I lived there, but it would just be kind of strange. In a way, I’m done with Palo Alto. I really enjoyed my time there and I have some friends and lots of good memories there. It’s just that I’m done. I don’t want to hang out at Stanford for four days. I’ve been there so many times. Plus I have my favorites: favorite restaurant, favorite bike ride, favorite drive, favorite shopping, favorite bar. I’d just want to visit my favorites and not do anything else! I’d probably just end up renting a car, getting some really good fish ‘n chips, and driving out to Montara beach for the sunset. But that’s not my reason for going to Palo Alto. I don’t know. It’s just a blending of worlds, the pre-MBA Sarah and the current MBA Sarah, that I’m just not ready to face.

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I’m feeling much better. I don’t know if it’s because I got over my cold and finally feel rested or because this week of school has actually been fun. Even though I haven’t gotten a lot accomplished homework-wise, I feel like I’ve done a lot and I have some fun stuff lined up for this weekend.

Since I missed a few days of school last week, I was feeling really stupid during my team meetings. I didn’t really know what was going on and I felt like I was slowing everyone down. I think I’m finally caught up and I can participate in the group discussions now. I’m struggling with spreadsheet modeling and operations management and I really don’t want to fall behind again especially since midterms start next week!

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